


Choosing Mortality

by marchh



Series: 51 percent [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/F, Faerie AU, M/M, More Murder, an excess of feels, sherlock and john really only make cameos, they need their own spinoff with lestrade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-03-26 14:16:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13859466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchh/pseuds/marchh
Summary: Mycroft's already lied to everyone and gone and tampered with his own magic levels, and he should know that his secret-happy-blissful-bubble isn't going to last forever.You can't raise the mother of monsters up to the sky and not expect to attract the wrong kind of attention, and Mycroft is about to learn what tying himself to a very dangerous man means.(this is a sequel)





	1. Haste

During the first week, Mycroft learns Jim can be very clingy.

 

He also quickly learns he hardly minds.

 

-

 

The shot leaves Mycroft dizzy; his vision prickles, and the female voice echoes in his head, fading as quickly as it came. He later learns Jim had kept the syringe as a sort of trophy, a mark of an early success in his experiments. He learns this as Jim presses kisses to the crook of his arm, then up and up until he can trace the freckles on his shoulders.

 

Immediately after Mycroft upturns his world, Jim is reaching for him, pulling him over and up onto the bed by his arm. He inspects the fast-fading bruise, running his fingers over it almost reverently.

 

“Oh, Mycroft,” he breathes. Mycroft can’t see his face; he can’t tell if that’s sadness or awe or longing in his voice.

 

Then Jim brings his hands to Mycroft’s face, and his mouth to his, capturing them in a kiss.

 

It’s their first, Mycroft thinks absentmindedly.They’ve done this all out of order.

 

First kisses aren't supposed to be like this. They’re supposed to be clumsy and overeager and the cliff upon which hopes and dreams are dashed onto the jagged rocks of reality.

 

No, this—

 

—this is a soul-consuming culmination of his every hidden thought and desire. He would think he’s dreaming but he  _ feels so much _ it burns through his veins and there’s no one that could remain unconscious through something like that searing through their nerves. 

 

Mycroft clasps his hands over Jim’s, still on either side of his face, in a silent plea to never abandon him. Jim, as if hearing it, breaks apart, eyes open, memorizing Mycroft’s expression. 

 

Then he presses their foreheads together, still staring into his eyes, memorizing that jagged blue-grey, not soft now, but serious. 

 

“I’m yours, and you’re mine.” Jim says this like it’s a spell.

 

“Yes,” Mycroft replies; he says this like it’s a prayer.

 

After that, it’s a  veritable quest to get closer, closer.

 

At some point Mycroft finds himself clear headed enough to remind Jim he’s still injured. Jim says they don't have to do that, they don't have to do anything he doesn't want, but didn't he realize he’s no longer hurt? Didn’t he feel it? Because he can feel it too now..

 

“You're like this too Mycroft, and I'll show you,” Jim whispers, mouth against Mycroft’s ear, before scraping his teeth down along his jaw, finding a soft spot on his neck.

 

He bites it hard enough to really hurt, deep enough to leave teeth marks, enough to leave the skin raw and hurting, if not broken. Then plants a kiss over it and tells Mycroft to think  _ heal. _

 

“The difference isn’t just two percent, darling,” Jim murmurs, voice low. “You’ve crossed a threshold, there’s no going back now, not at all.”

 

He says it so quietly, as if he’s ashamed, as if he’s guilty, and Mycroft wants to tell him not to be.

 

The wound indeed heals inhumanly fast, and Jim runs his finger over the spot with regret. 

 

“It doesn't mean we don't still hurt,” he says so quietly Mycroft isn’t sure it was meant for him. 

 

Mycroft can’t apologize for this; it isn’t his to apologize for.

 

“Mark me,” he says instead. “Anywhere, everywhere, however you like.”

 

“Oh, Mycroft,” Jim says again, but the disbelief recedes—just the tiniest bit—each time he says it, and Mycroft counts it a victory. “I didn’t think I needed you—to think I didn’t think I needed you, when we first met. But then you offered you heart up to me on a silver platter, and how could I possibly resist?”

 

Jim pushes him back onto the bed, and he goes down, down, down.

 

-

 

When Mycroft wakes again, it's dark save for the shred of moonlight peeking through the window.

 

Their limbs are so entwined he can’t tell where he ends and where Jim begins.

 

He’s also starving.

 

Jim is fast asleep, a deep dreamless slumber, so he slides out of bed as gently and quietly as he can manage and drifts to the kitchen.

 

What a day.

 

He stands by the sink for a long moment, just to breathe.

 

Just this morning. Well. Yesterday, now—

 

He'd been looking for Jim. (Well he’s found him now.)

 

Just today he'd lied to his brother, his superiors, his country. 

 

(But he has Jim now.)

 

He's been out of bed for 15 minutes when Jim comes up behind him and plasters himself to Mycroft's back. 

 

“Are you making me breakfast?” Jim mumbles into his shoulder blades, voice sleep sleep-drunk.

 

“Within my means,” Mycroft jokes back. He rummages around for eggs, finds no beans but turns up sausages, and some bread to toast. Jim sticks to him the entire time he cooks, offering no commentary and no help. Mycroft doesn’t try to make him budge.

 

It’s not yet 4 in the morning. 

 

The food is done and they push their chairs together very close, and Jim drapes his legs haphazardly over Mycroft’s lap as they eat.

 

“I took the week off,” Mycroft brings up out of nowhere.

 

“Good,” Jim sighs, and crunches into his toast. Then he steals a kiss, casual as anything, before going back to his breakfast, dragging the crust of his toast through the runny egg yolks on Mycroft’s plate. 

 

After breakfast is no different, Mycroft learns. It’s not the sleepiness that makes Jim stick like glue—no, he is like this all week. 

 

If Mycroft is gone from his sight for ever more than 10 minutes, he comes searching.

 

Mycroft doesn’t mind a single bit, and commits every touch and curve to memory. 

 

They spend an awful lot of time in bed. 

 

Jim maps the constellations on his back and leaves nebulae and galaxies of his own. He’s capricious, and sometimes wants Mycroft absolutely still as he catalogues every inch of him and learns what he likes and doesn’t. Other times he’s quick and desperate and begs Mycroft to use him, hungrily soaking up not just his pleasure but Mycroft's own.

 

But his hands always, nearly unconsciously, drift to Mycroft’s hands, as if he might lose him otherwise, as if he’ll wake and find they’ve parted ways. And Jim seems blissfully content when held, so Mycroft does it when they’re reading, bathing, or just because.

 

But the best is when Jim laughs, for whatever reason, for every reason. He seems so unaccustomed to getting to be happy, always looking over his shoulder for the next storm, that Mycroft resolves to carve out the space for him in the world to do so, to  _ be _ , no matter the cost.

 

-

 

“I need to know everything about you,” Jim says, not for the first time, as he kisses Mycroft’s hipbone, one hand still clasped together in his.

 

So Mycroft tells him; he’s already gone over university, boarding school, childhood. He tells him about growing up a 49%, growing up a Holmes; about expectations. Jim can hear the loneliness in his tone, and presses closer.

 

“I told you I have a brother,” Mycroft says, and Jim tilts his head to look at him. “You’ve met him.”

 

Jim waits.

 

“I’ve also a sister,” Mycroft continues, eyes drifting to the ceiling.

 

“The inhuman I told you about, the neighbor who burned. That was her. She was a 70%, and she isn’t dead,” Mycroft finishes. He hasn’t heard her since that one initial whisper, and hopes he won’t again. 

 

Jim’s breath is steady beside him, and he waits until Mycroft is ready.

 

“Will... I meet her?” Jim finally asks.

 

Mycroft knew he would ask. He knew it would be a difficult subject for him to disclose.

 

“I can only hope that never happens,” he says. “I don’t trust her.”

 

Jim doesn’t reply. He, as well as anyone could, understands the implications.

 

They’re quiet for a long while, and for the first time, Mycroft wonders if he should be afraid.

 

Then, Jim wraps his arms around Mycroft.

 

“I wouldn’t risk you either,” Jim says.

 

And he looks so heartbreakingly beautiful as he spills his own secrets; his childhood home covered in pixies. Growing up. Learning. Wandering the continent until he found his place not amongst the living but in between. The terrible things he’s done. Things he feels remorse for, things he doesn’t feel anything for. 

 

His horrors and confusion left years untold come tumbling out; they seep into the sheets, the walls, some so traumatic the stains are indelible. But Mycroft doesn’t care if his whole world is marked by Jim forever.

 

-

 

Of course, the week doesn’t last forever.

 

“Only four other people know your name,” Mycroft tells Jim, because he knows somehow it’s important, and Jim is nothing if not a survivor.

 

Jim looks at him in the mirror, before pulling his shirt over his head. 

 

“I’ll take care of it. And besides those four, it’s not on any servers. Pictures won’t be a problem either,” Mycroft continues.

 

“We could...start over. Wherever, however we like,” he says.

 

Jim stares in the mirror again, but Mycroft isn’t looking at him. So he walks over and takes his face in his hands.

 

“You’re hesitating about something,” Jim states, eyes searching.

 

Mycroft’s hands go to Jim’s reflexively.

 

“I’d hoped to be some use to my country,” Mycroft replies. “Maybe you think it’s silly, but—”

 

“No.”

 

Mycroft is startled by how fierce the tone is.

 

“It's who you  _ are, _ ” Jim says, in that whisper-harsh voice of his. “And I love every bit of you.”

 

“I’m yours, and you’re mine,” he repeats. “Whatever we choose to do, we’ll do it together.”

 

“We could do anything together,” Jim murmurs, stepping ever closer. “And if that space for us doesn’t exist in this world, we’ll carve it out ourselves, and no one will be able to take it away.”

 

“Just for us,” Mycroft agrees, hands moving down to tilt Jim’s face up for a kiss.

 

It’s the last thing they say for a long while, because tomorrow, Mycroft needs to face reality.

 

But before drifting off to sleep, he hears Jim’s whisper, and wraps it up and tucks it away in his heart.

 

“Because nothing could be unbearable again if I have you.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so if you can believe it this (the first part, the whole idea) originally started out as a "oh there aren't any fics of my otp that are just light and fluffy so let's think of The Most Inane au trope we can" and so I tried to do a simple little coffee shop AU that was maybe a bit quirky, hence the magical realism, but then Mycroft walked into the cafe and the moment he laid eyes on Jim he was a goner. That's it. Game over. And Jim's never been so wanted before he doesn't even know how to handle it. The two of them are very all-or-nothing people. They would burn empires for each other.


	2. Challenger

The wind is biting, punishingly cold and Mycroft steps into the cabin from the deck of the ferry for refuge.

 

He always steps outside at least a minute, but never much longer, to remind himself why he’s on this trip. It’s like this no matter the season.

 

Mycroft is headed toward a tiny, man-made island built to contain a monstrosity: His sister. Eurus. The ‘East Wind.’

 

Funny how the gust over the sea they traverse never once comes from the east.

 

The entire structure of the island is built like a mausoleum, covered in so many wards that there’s nary a smooth surface left. So many restrictions it’s as if even the color has been seeped out of this world.

 

Bone white.

 

Bone dry.

 

Nothing should be able to survive here, without the warmth and vitality every living thing needs.

 

But then—weren’t like any other living thing, were they. They were ‘Other.’

 

Mycroft shivered. He’d crossed that line himself now, and he didn’t know where that left him. It was clear to him he was still human, not fae, not even close. But Eurus—Eurus had barely a shred of humanity in her at the best of times.

 

-

 

His steps echo on his way in, all the way down the spiral of steps, the labyrinth of halls, until the sounds mesh and dampen into a quiet dirge. The entire structure of the prison is a ward. Funny, Mycroft thinks idly, that the only thing that can contain old magic is old magic itself. Runes and word will, here, do you much more good than the latest state-of-the-art security system.

 

At the end of one unassuming passageway is a large, floor-length mirror. It’s sickly green tint almost glows, and though it looks glass from either side, face-on, it is like staring into a smokey swirling cauldron.

 

Mycroft approaches.  He barely has to wait a second before his sister appears from the murky green.

 

“Hello brother dear,” she says, as her image shifts. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

 

“Hello, sister mine, have you been well?” he replies in rote.

 

Mycroft’s learned it pays to be polite. It pays to follow the script. When it comes to her, even with all of her unpredictability, by human standards, by any normal standard, she follows certain rules like Law.

 

There’s a script, see. First there are the greetings, then Mycroft opens up to her, about himself, about Sherlock. He tells her stories from the past two years they've been apart, as if recounting highlights from his day during a family dinner.

 

He shares his history. It's more dangerous than it sounds, because the two of them are keenly aware of the power the spoken word holds.

 

Then she asks to be freed. He will deny her request. And then he will be free from her for another two years.

 

Eurus raps the glass with her knuckles

 

“As much fun as a girl can have by herself in a mirror,” she says. A sharp smile. Then she continues.

 

“You though, you—I see you’ve been enjoying yourself.”

 

She gasps like it’s scandalous, like she even understands the concept of shame

 

“Will I get to meet him?”

 

The blood drains from Mycroft’s face.

 

“What could you possibly want from that?” he asks, voice steady. He'd expected mockery, taunts, about him becoming inhuman. But she shouldn't know about _him_.

 

“Isn’t that something families do? Meet each other’s beloveds,” she says with a simpering pout. Mycroft often questions, in her presence, whether he ever felt any love for her. Whether he feels any now.

 

She is family, he reminds himself, and family is important.

 

Then she shakes her head and tsks at him. “Is this what young love is?”

 

“Foolish, stupid, throwing away possibilities and trading them for promises,” she says, languid, taking up leaning against one side of the glass.

 

“Oh and you’ve _bonded._ It’s tenuous, yes, but you’ve practically promised yourselves to each other, with your words and vows.”

 

“And it shows,” she says, voice dark now. “It reeks.”

 

“The carrions will be coming.” Her voice has taken on a rhythmic tone. “And the war is just beginning.”

 

“Everyone will have to take a side.”

 

Mycroft is lost.

 

“Eurus,” he warns. “What are you talking about?”

 

This is not in the script.

 

“Are you even capable of love…?” She tilt her head, thinking. “You’re selfish to your core. You care about knowing more than you care about anything else, anyone else. You only care about answers.”

 

“You had your own men kill each other, let your own brother expose himself and risk his life, all to get a move ahead in the game, to get answers,” she muses.

 

“And then what happens? What happens when the shame becomes too much? You’re a coward, brother dear, and when the storm recedes and our bones are laid bare on the shores, everyone will see what you’ve done,” she whispers. “You couldn’t live with that, could you?”

 

“What will you do then? Hang yourself and snap your neck? Jump and crack your head open, spilling your lovely brains to the ground? You wouldn’t use a blade, no, you’re too squeamish for the cherry-rich red of life that flows through you—”

 

“I came because you called,” he says. She’s not on script, he thinks, get her back on script. “What is it that you _want_?”

 

“And if the war is coming, I want to play, too,” she says, sounding very much like herself now. “Let me out, brother dear. Let me free and I’ll guarantee you live through it. Perhaps even your lover too.”

 

“Otherwise I can’t promise there won’t be chaos.”

 

She doesn't say she’ll promise no chaos if she’s out—that much is obvious.

 

“Even from here, from in here, in this space beyond and isolate, blood magic still works, remember,” she says in a sing-song voice.

 

“But you've forgotten, haven't you? Has sex rotted your brain?” she cackles. “You forgot, didn't you? When you gave your magic to Sherlock—oh, _oh_ —don't make that face, you knew I knew—what if you'd given the bond with it? How would you even know?”

 

“You could have risked my escaping. Risked opening up your baby brother, my big brother, to my burning wrath,” she says. “And you'd have no idea.”

 

Mycroft’s fear is evident on his face. He wants to throw up. Had he really forgotten? When Sherlock—

 

_It was the only way._

 

Was he just deluding himself?

 

His words are fast and he’s sure she can hear his heart racing. He’d slam his fist against the glass if he wasn’t so afraid of hitting it and—hitting nothing.

 

“No, that wasn’t the deal,” he says in a rush. “I come here once every two years. You leave Sherlock alone. You don’t interfere with my life.”

 

He’s going off script—he _knows._ Get her back on script.

 

“Blood magic goes both ways, remember,” he threatens instead. “The moment I feel you try to escape, we both go out.”

 

Eurus laughs at that—she can’t stop laughing.

 

It’s the most disturbing thing in the world, Eurus’s laughter.

 

It‘s not joy or pleasure or delight. It’s not even cruel or conniving. It’s a mockery of all those things.

 

It’s a caricature of what laughter should be.

 

“Oh, brother dear,” she says, catching her breath. “As usual, you fail to see what isn’t there.”

 

Mycroft grits his teeth. The usual taunts then. He has a whole security system designed around that philosophy, built to detect what isn't there, and what the absence means. They’re back on script then.

 

“You felt it, didn't you? The moment you damned your soul,” she whispers. “It was _my_ voice you heard, don't deny it.”

 

The worst part is, Mycroft can't tell, still can't tell,whether it was real or imagined. He never could quite call her bluffs.

 

“We're tied in more than just blood now, you and I,” Eurus croons. Then she giggles. “Why don't you join me? The water’s warm. And you're one of us now.”

 

“Oh you've gone and _done it_ , that's what I said wasn't it? You've gone and done it brother dear,  and now where will you go? Will you keep everyone from finding out and continue to play along? Play house, play _human,_ to please your masters?”

 

“You never did belong, and now, you've made everything worse.”

 

“Go now,” she says, playing with her hair, as if she’s about to retire to her rooms, as if she doesn’t exist in a netherspace, isolated.

 

“I tire of seeing you,” she says with a fake yawn. “And I have great plans to consider.”

 

He leaves, but the unsettling feeling stays with him.

 

-

 

London is all too happy to get on with life, it seems.

 

Jim steps out onto the streets, in a green cargo jacket, t-shirt, and jeans, and he is an anonymous citizen, much like the rest of them.

 

He doesn’t know whether to feel comforted or enraged at the fact. It could go either way, he supposes. He has time now, to decide.

 

He feels at ease in a way he can’t imagine ever experiencing. As if a new world of possibilities has opened up before him, and he gets to pioneer its exploration.

 

Jim is across the street from the entrance of a park and he sees, off in the distance, a ripple in the fabric of reality, and wonders if he’s seeing things ( _again_ , a whisper supplies), wonders if his mind is supplying images stemming from his thoughts, supplanting reality.

 

But no.

 

Jim crosses the sidewalk and heads into the corner of the park where the ripple has expanded to a shimmering film, and a man steps out from between the trees, out of nothing.

 

No, not a man.

 

Blonde crew cut; clear, sharp, cut-glass eyes; sinewy muscles under clothes cut from no natural cloth; and marks and calluses on his strong hands that looked exactly the same.

 

Jim stops short, a good ways away from the creature.

 

“What makes you think wearing that face will make me more likely to trust you?” Jim calls out.

 

He’s on the far edge of the shimmering bubble now, and the cool light of the foggy morning has been replaced with a golden, afternoon glow. Different worlds, indeed.

 

The creature wearing Colonel Sebastian Moran’s face gives him a beatific smile with his too-perfect features. The memory of the washed-up man who spent his days gambling with unsavory company jars with the inhumanly beautiful image before him.

 

Jim knows there’s no way there can be a real relation between the two. Moran was as human as they came. Above average in some ways, sure, but there was nothing Other about him.

 

He also knows there can’t be any relation because Moran has been dead for six years. Jim saw him bleed out personally, and watched as his eyes lost focus, and became dead to the world.

 

What this creature means, then, is to say that they've been watching. Ten years at least. Blink of an eye, for the likes of them.

 

“Trust? Oh, you’re far too clever for that,” the faerie says. The voice is all wrong. It’s the same timber, but the words, the cadence, it’s all wrong. “The familiar face is merely a courtesy.”

 

It gives Jim a sweeping bow. Jim shoves his hands into his pockets and returns the gesture with a placid stare.

 

“And aren’t you a clever child,” it continues, “to have accomplished in the blink of an eye what has taken us a good stretch of time.”

 

It rolls its shoulders and Jim thinks he catches a glimpse of rustling feathers shivering down its back. He narrows his eyes.

 

“Where do you think children like you come from? The strange ones, with just a little too much magic,” it croons, moving closer, closer, but Jim stands his ground.

 

“Two centuries, not even close to one lifetime for the likes of us, but it is time nonetheless, has gone by since the first war that left the Unseelie Queen dead and our Seelie one missing,” it says, taking another step closer. “In all that time, boy, I’ve been preparing. We, the Seelie Court, have been preparing.”

 

The sky darkens behind the creature and a rainless storm starts to brew. It’s as if they’re in a puppet theater set, Jim thinks.

 

“You couldn’t possibly think the rift was natural, could you?” it whispers in his ear, suddenly close.

 

Jim startles, falling backward, only stopping because the faerie catches him and spins him around so they’ve switched places. It’d moved in front of him in an instant, and now stood between him and his exit.

 

But…

 

This information, this is new.

 

And it’s all _so exciting._

 

“Faeries created the rift,” Jim says. The revelation changes everything. “Intentional?”

 

“Created it, yes. Intentional? Not so much…” it says, head tilting at an unnatural angle. Then it recomposes itself, adopting a very Moran-like stance, which nearly throws Jim off.

 

“An unfortunate consequence of the war,” it says, bored. “Magic leaked into the world, and our court fae grew weaker, became fewer, as humans gorged themselves on the spoils of war.”

 

Jim blinked. This, this too is new.

 

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks, unable to stop himself. The creature’s mouth curls into a very satisfied smile.

 

“Because this is just a drop in the ocean of secrets we have to share, if you so choose to join us,” it replies.

 

Jim scoffs. “And your price?”

 

It bats its eyes guilelessly. “That’s it. To join us.”

 

“I’m offering you life immemorial, free from their morals and societies, free from the restrictions of petty levels and primitive science,” it says. “Because, as I said, you clever boy, you’ve figured it half out already.”

 

Ah. Jim’s eyes widen.

 

“The grenaline solution,” he says, quickly working out his leverage. He hasn’t yet tested it airborne en masse, and he hadn’t planned to now. But. It would work. And for some reason, the Seelie Court wanted it. A war against the Unseelie?

 

They wanted more inhumans.

 

They wanted to build an army.

 

Could the solution on its own turn human into magic folk?

 

No, Jim thought, studying the creature before him, thinking back to its words carefully. No it couldn’t, but it could bring them far over the threshold enough that it seemed faeries themselves could do the rest of the work. And they were willing.

 

Jim laughs, and the creature’s expression turns cold though its smile doesn’t leave its face.

 

“You have doubts, then, boy?” it asks.

 

“No deal, no dice,” Jim replies.

 

The faerie glances around the little bubble in the corner of the park, which has cycled through spring afternoons to summer thunderstorms, and now the leaves were golden and rusted rich red, the air growing cold.

 

“This could all be yours,” it sings. “Riches beyond what the natural world has to offer, boundless delights, everlasting pleasure. You’ve much more in common with us than with them, you’ve always had.”

 

It sways closer to Jim, and places a hand on each arm, tilting its head down to face him.

 

“Don’t lie and say you’re not tempted. It’s very unbecoming on you.”

 

“You’ve never been one of them,” it says. “They never saw you as one of them.”

 

It lowers its head just a fraction, and Jim’s sense of self-preservation screams at him to get out of there before it’s too late.

 

He grins up at the creature, feral.

 

“Maybe not,” he says.

 

Then he runs.

 

He rips himself from the loose prison between its arms and bolts, eyes locked on the edge of the park.

 

“You couldn’t possibly think that after pulling a stunt like that, that we wouldn’t take notice,” it calls out calmly after him. It doesn’t chase past the ripple’s barrier, though. But it’s not done. “And that’s what you wanted all along, wasn’t it? To not be alone.”

 

But Jim’s not alone now, he thinks, and he doesn’t stop running, heart beating in his throat. He’s not.


	3. Sentiment

Jim nearly knocks over a woman in a black hoodie on his way out of the park. One of those morning joggers in athletic gear. He catches his breath once he’s several streets away, and then blends into the crowd inside a shopping center. 

 

Autumn’s not even halfway gone, but the shops are already putting up Christmas decorations. At least the music hasn’t started yet.

 

He sighs, and fiddles with an ornament display, before pretending to look at scarves.

 

The adrenaline’s still going strong, and he fights back a grin.

 

Court faeries. This changes everything.

 

Jim has seen the magic folk all his life. They’re plentiful and varied, and most of them dumb as doornails. They didn’t scheme, they squabbled. And they didn’t wage wars so much as throwing stones. No, that wasn’t for the common creatures, practically fauna of the magic world. That was left to the Court faeries, those who had formed alliances and social hierarchies and existed in two, equal and opposing forces. 

 

The lost folk mentioned in storybooks and old poems.

 

They’d returned then, and decided to seek Jim out personally. 

 

Jim mentally catalogues his properties, guessing at what might have been cleaned out, or not, from the agency search and seizures a week ago. Does he enough to trap one of those tree men, perhaps? A pixie he could get his hands on without much effort, but they likely wouldn’t know enough to have anything interesting to reveal anyway.

 

Form what Mycroft had told him, they’d gotten to most everything. But not everything. He’d have some knick knacks lying around.

 

He’ll have to make a stop on his way back to Mycroft’s flat, then. After that, he’ll take to the library immediately.

 

-

 

By the time Mycroft’s taken the trip back, and he always takes the long way over the sea so as to have time to clear his head, to process the horrors like soldiers coming home from war, it's evening and daylight is waning.

 

He opens the door to find his flat has basically been converted into a mad scientist’s laboratory.

 

The books have evidently decided that the coming winter was reason enough to migrate, and instead took up every otherwise available surface of his living room and then some. They sprawled across the sofa, the armrests, the coffee table corner, and stacked up high on the armchairs, one even on the lamp. Others float, in rotation, around the conductor of this cacophonous symphony of study.

 

Papers, likewise, hang in walls from the ceiling downward like interchangeable bulletin boards, rearranging themselves as needed, tangled together by arrangements of colored string. 

 

Then there is the water sprite, trapped in what looks like a capped goldfish bowl, angrily banging on the glass. 

 

“Jim, what happened?” Mycroft calls across the papery barrier, gingerly stepping into his own living room.

 

Jim looks up and nearly trips over backwards over—is that a cat?—and Mycroft is across the room in an instant, grabbing onto one flailing arm before he can fall over and smash the lamp or goodness knows what else.

 

“Research,” he answers simply. Then he plops down on the rug, cross-legged, and grabs at a book idly floating by. He waves Mycroft down to the floor with him, and Mycroft hesitates for a moment, opting to shrug out of his coat first.

 

“About?”

 

“The Faerie Courts,” Jim explains, flipping to a passage in the book and passing it back to Mycroft. 

 

_ Some categorize the Folk as either Light or Dark, Blessed or Unblessed, those who will help you, and those who will only harm you should you cross them… _

 

Mycroft is about to ask for further explanation when Jim continues.

 

“The one I met today, he used the terms Seelie and Unseelie,” Jim says, getting up on his knees and scooting over to the glass bowl on the coffee table. He raps at it, and the sprite inside unleashes an angry tirade of bubbles in return.

 

“Are you ready to talk yet?” he asks it with a frown.

 

“The one today?” Mycroft’s blood runs cold. 

 

Then—

 

— _ sprite? _

 

Mycroft’s eyes land back on the bowl on the table and he finally realizes what he’s seeing.

 

It’s not terror or that roils through him so much as it is the feeling of being completely hollowed out in one go. Resignation, of sorts. He’s always been that kind of person.

 

Resigned, to a degree. 

 

Numb now.

 

He’s made his bed and now he has to lie in it.

 

Is it such a bad thing, though?

 

Jim throws him a hesitant look and then scans the room, trying to decide if it will be better if he makes light of it, or if he reaches out for Mycroft to offer comfort.

 

“I guess being in the city there aren’t so many of them,” Jim says instead, opting for neither. Factual. Mycroft responds well to that. “I suppose you wouldn’t have noticed earlier. They can’t normally get in a place like yours. It’s well warded.”

 

Mycroft’s still unresponsive. 

 

Even after speaking with his sister…

 

He hadn’t exactly come to full realization of what this meant for him. 

 

He had  _ felt _ the difference, sure, but. 

 

_ What about the madness? _ some part of him said. It sounded like Aunt Theodora. She had been the worst, when Sherlock’s… _ condition _ came to light.

 

_ Mycroft is 16 and Uncle Rudy has come to visit him during a summer position in the defense ministry, an apprenticeship of sorts, which his uncle helped secure. He opens a cardholder, and shows Mycroft a faded print of a drawing of a minor Greek god.  _

 

_ They don’t ever speak her name.  _

 

_ That was the first rule. _

 

_ He knows Eurus has been interned ever since the accident (that’s what they’re calling it, an accident) and over the past few years made a recovery no one would have thought possible. It still might not be possible, and thus his uncle has kept it secret from Mycroft’s parents.  _

 

_ He knows this is a lie. _

 

_ “The weather should be pleasant tomorrow; and a good day for sailing,” his uncle says after they’ve exchanged their greetings. _

 

_ Tomorrow he lays eyes on the sister he hasn’t seen for four years.  _

 

_ And then his uncle explains everything; the mutation. The tests they’ve run. How the best course of action, the most peaceable one for them all, would be to merely restrain her. But for time immemorial, of course. _

 

_ “She’s closer to a djinn than human at this point,” he says sometime after the meeting, once they’ve set foot outside the mausoleum. _

 

_ He explains the intricate bloodwork it took to bind and seal Eurus in her tomb, with only a mirror granting her a view of the outside world—to her own death should she venture out to the world she was born into.  _

 

_ It doesn’t take a genius to work out that when Uncle Rudy is gone, someone will have to take his place as the, binding agent, as it were. _

 

_ Mycroft understands this, in theory, and he is resigned at 16 when the knowledge sinks in. _

 

_ He finds he’s still not ready, when it happens four years later. _

 

Mycroft realizes he’s yet to respond. And Jim has gone so still Mycroft could have been convinced he was carved from stone. 

 

“If you're having regrets about me,” Jim says, “it's too late for that.”

 

He reaches for Jim to tell him that’s not what he meant, but the words won’t come. Jim’s eyes are hard when he says, “You can’t make me disappear so easily.”

 

“That’s not—”

 

Mycroft scrubs his hand over his face. That’s not what he meant to say. He doesn’t want to argue the point. He doesn’t want to argue at all.

 

“The one today?” he asks instead, tired. 

 

JIm waits so long Mycroft is afraid he might not answer. But then he slumps back against him and pulls a couple of pieces of paper down with him.

 

“He took the guise of a man I used to work with. A washed-up soldier who taught me how to count cards and get into places I had no business being, and later worked on commission,” Jim says without much feeling. “Until he got into a brawl, drunk, and bled out from a stab wound.”

 

He was more than that. He was practically Jim’s second in command, until… until the madness.

 

Mycroft takes the papers from Jim. The old poems indeed speak of two opposing courts, not always in conflict, but not quite at peace either.

 

Many of the songs and texts speak of an impending war, however.

 

_ Two Queens… _

 

_ Both defended by their champions _

 

“He offered me immortality, riches, the usual,” Jim muses, and Mycroft’s head snaps around to stare. Jim barely takes stock of Mycroft’s discomfort, still hurt from some perceived slight, nor more interested in finding the passage he was trying to remember. 

 

“What? Why?”

 

At that, Jim finally looks sheepish, just a little.

 

“Maybe sending up a giant beacon to the sky with enough solution to turn all of London inhuman wasn’t the most subtle of my plans,” he says, not very sorry at all. He’s perhaps even a bit defiant about it, even now. 

 

“And now they want the solution, I presume,” Jim continues. “He said…”

 

He hesitates, then looks to make sure Mycroft is listening, and, more importantly, doing so without judgement.

 

“The rift didn’t just open up on its own. They did something that tore open the magic,” Jim says. “It tore apart the courts. The old texts write about it as if it’s about to happen, but obviously, it has, and we’ve stopped writing about it.”

 

“But whatever they did, it was worse than they expected, maybe, because they’ve been down for two centuries as people soaked up the magic, I think, and now they want to take it back,” Jim says. “And that’s what they want with the solution.”

 

“More people like you,” Mycroft says, more a question than statement.

 

Jim gives him a pointed look. It’s “us” now, he remembers. 

 

“Yes,” Jim answers anyway. “I suppose it’s all very... _ experimental _ for them as well. My first few died. You remember.”

 

Mycroft grimaces, and looks away. Jim scowls. 

 

“You know what I am, you always knew. And I’m not going to pretend for you,” Jim says. 

 

“I didn’t ask you to,” Mycroft shoots back. He doesn’t know why Jim is acting like this, but the sense of unease is contagious.

 

Jim just scoffs. “Yes and you don’t expect anything of me either. Did you want to just cage me away somewhere, like a collector?”

 

“While you go about pretending you’re still the same, with your shady government job and posh apartment, what is it exactly that you expect me to do?” Jim says, getting up, getting an arm’s length away. “ _ Hide? _ ”

 

“I don’t think my concern with you making a deal with a court agent is entirely unfounded,” Mycroft replies, dry. 

 

Jim laughs. “Court  _ agent _ , look at you, thinking every situation is one you can bring under control. This isn’t like your game of politics  _ Mycroft _ . I know the magic folk in ways you can’t even come close to understanding, and I can hold my own.”

 

“It’s too dangerous, I won’t risk you—”

 

“ _ I’m _ dangerous,” Jim hisses, whipping his head around. He stalks forward and the air crackles between them as if to demonstrate, yes, he is, in fact, quite a threat and always has been.

 

“This is different,” Mycroft presses on, heedless of danger, because Jim does that to him. “These aren’t people.”

 

“Am I not people?” 

 

“You’re one or the other Jim, it's impossible to choose both—” Mycroft stops short. Where had those words come from?

 

ops short, unsure where the words came from.  Mycroft’s aware now that he’s being completely irrational. 

 

Yes, he wants to hide Jim away. 

 

He is terrified he’ll lose him.

 

It’s an ugly, horrible feeling. 

 

They’ve been screaming at each other and it’s all so senseless and Mycroft doesn’t know where it’s all coming from. His own innate sense of worthlessness? Jim having had nowhere to belong to for so long he doesn’t know what it’s like anymore? 

 

Jim seems to realize it too, and quiets. Then he falls back and slumps into the sofa. He gives the glass bowl on the coffee table a blank look. Evidently their outburst was entertaining for the little sprite, which seems keeled over in laughter. 

 

“If I asked you what  _ you _ did today, you couldn't even answer, could you?”

 

“I saw my sister,” Mycroft replies without heat. “And she described to me what I'd look like with my brains splattered on the street. I'd rather she never learn of your existence but evidently it's too late.”

 

The living room is dark and he can smell the onset of a storm, and Mycroft remembers—

 

_ Mummy barges into the nursery where Mycroft had been watching his younger siblings and the air had begun to darken and crackle. _

 

_ Sherlock had grabbed a toy Eurus was reaching for, and she is glaring daggers, eyes wet. _

 

_ When Mycroft looks up, he sees a storm cloud brewing. The house seems to shake, with the knowledge that it won't be able to contain an impending storm. _

 

_ “Mycroft!” his mother hisses. “Don't make your sister angry!” _

 

“You don’t get to decide what I do,” Jim says. At that, Mycroft is nearly collapses from the guilt. 

 

“No, of course not,” he says, “I never wanted to dictate”—he sighs, but resolves to get the words out—“anything.”

 

He knows it’s part of why he loves Jim so much. The uncontrollable nature of him, the fact that he can hold his own, against Mycroft, and, he prays, against anything else that might now have taken an interest. Something is coming. Eurus said so as well. He believes it too. 

 

Jim give him a long look in return, and Mycroft can’t tell if he’s assessing, or regretful, or disbelieving. It eats at him that he can only think of negative possibilities. He’s caught off guard completely when Jim opens his arms instead, beckoning Mycroft down. 

 

He evidently waits a beat too long, because Jim rolls his eyes, then shoves a wave of magic at his feet so that Mycroft practically trips into Jim’s lap. 

 

Jim tucks his chin over Mycroft's head, proprietary, and the whole position is awkward and not very comfortable but Mycroft is relieved nonetheless. 

 

“I would never want to be fae,” Jim murmurs. “Boredom for eternity, can you imagine?”

 

“One lifetime of inanity is far more than enough,” Jim says. 

 

“I’d rather kill myself than let them turn me,” he muses, casual, and Mycroft tenses immediately. Jim’s unrepentant, and only rubs his hand up and down Mycroft’s back. “What? Death is a much prefered alternative to never-ending tedium.”

 

The atmosphere is heavy, but neither of them elaborate—

 

—then a watery laugh shatters the silence.

 

“They’d never take  _ you _ ,” the sprite burbles. Its voice is shrill, and echoes through the space in an unnatural way.

 

“The Queens were lost when the Seelie champion tore apart our world, tore apart the courts.” It crosses its arms, crosses its legs, and settles, sulking, at the bottom of its little glass prison. 

 

“Everyone know this,” it says, petulant. Impatient, the sprite kicks at the glass a bit again, as if to test it, as if it hadn’t been ramming its little body into the warded material the past hour. Mycroft and Jim just stare. “Can I leave now?”

 

“Everyone knows the Courts have no sway, no power, no  _ teeth _ now that their Queens are gone, now that they have no Champions to strike  _ terror _ into the hearts of the Folk,” it says.

 

“No one’s gonna turn anyone,” it finishes flippantly. “No one’s got the power or gall anymore.”

 

Jim raises an eyebrow. “Is that really an either-or scenario?”

 

The sprite squints.

 

“What's the difference?”

 

“Oh there's a world of difference.” Jim bares his teeth and the spikes along the little sprite’s spine stand straight up.

 

“Not in Faerie, no,” it says. “Now let me out. That was the deal.”

 

Jim looks down at Mycroft, then hesitates. 

 

“I won't be long,” he says, and Mycroft nods. 

 

-

 

Jim hops off to a brook several hundred kilometers away, and holds out the bowl. The sprite bangs against the glass senselessly again, as if doing so would free it quicker. Jim rolls his eyes.

 

The dark water bubbles, and two massive black eyes blink out at him.

 

“Did you bring me a treat?” it purrs. 

 

The sprite is too stupid to see what’s happening.

 

“I hear the courts are forming again,” Jim says. The water shifts, and instead of the scaly creature of molted skin he caught a glimpse of under the water, a beautiful female face framed by river plants rises.

 

She licks her lips, tongue barbed, teeth jagged and vicious.

 

“Maybe,” it replies in the same watery voice. “They would certainly like to. But the Queens are still dead. One champion as well, the other missing.”

 

“Hm,” Jim replies. “And what happens if one of them...returns?”

 

“The first court to crown a Queen wins!” it replies, gnashing its teeth, eyeing the sprite, whose realized its predicament now. “The champions are secondary, but a Queen won’t stay alive long without one.”

 

That was interesting enough.

 

Jim nods, and unscrews the lid of the watery glass prison. Then he unceremoniously dumps the sprite into the water, pointedly missing the creature’s mouth. He knows they like a chase.

 

Jim likes it too.

 

He wonders, while speeding back, whether Mycroft knows, how Mycroft would respond, if he knew how much Jim wanted to crack open his ribs and inscribe his name onto his heart before sewing him up again. 

 

Maybe it's not right, that he'd rather see it stop beating than to let it go. 

 

It's good, he thinks, that he locked himself into a promise to not deliberately hurt him. 

 

He can't be sure of himself otherwise.

 

-

 

Mycroft’s still numb to his sister’s threat from earlier in the day, though a part of his brain tells him he will crash in a few days, he always does.

 

But that’s when it occurs to Mycroft that he hasn’t yet fully processed the whirlwind of events that transpired the week past.

 

He’s always at least two steps ahead in all other matters—except his own emotions and feelings. In matters of the heart, he is woefully ill-equipped. 

 

And this time, it’s the craziest thing that makes him crash. 

 

The two of them, Mycroft and JIm, have made up, and Mycroft knows their bond has only been made stronger than ever by the conflict. He can feel it. 

 

Then, in the dark, Jim tells him he’s thought about ending it before, his life.

 

“It wasn’t that I decided to do it or not to do it, I just got distracted,” he says turning over and burying his face in Mycroft’s shoulder so he can no longer watch his expression. 

 

“I’m easily distracted,” he says, like they’re not talking about taking one’s own life. 

 

Then, quieter, “Everything’s a distraction, in the grand scheme of things. But not you. You’re not a distraction. You’re mine.”

 

“All my life it's like I've been hurtling toward—something. Only to learn there was no destination, no end. I needed an end point,” Jim says. “Or perhaps I needed an anchor.”

 

And that, of all things, is what sets Mycroft off.

 

His eyes are already wet when he reaches for Jim, cradles his head in his heads, and presses a slow, sad kiss to his lips. 

 

But before he knows it, he’s shaking. His shoulders can’t stand against the sobs that are wrenched from him, and then Jim is holding him instead, and he can’t stop the heaving breaths that seem to give him no air and the endless tears that pour out. 

 

Jim’s fingers comb through his hair for what might be minutes, what might be hours, as everything he’s done hits him all at once and he just. It’s too much. 

 

It’s too much but Jim holds him through the storm and he clings on like he's his personal salvation.  


	4. Invisible

  
  


Molly Hooper stares at her reflection in the cool light of her bathroom, and thinks, she’s got to get that fixed.

 

The lighting is harsh and bluish and it makes her look sick. She knows that’s not the real reason, though. The wrong lightbulb she put in when the old one went out two months ago isn’t the reason she’s wearing nearly five layers of foundation, some pale peachy color caked on over face, her neck, even her wrists. 

 

Thank God she wore gloves nearly all the time in the morgue.

 

No, the lightbulb isn’t why she’s been adamant about the long sleeves and high collars, not even risking a sliver of ankle. It’s not why she’s had to buy five boxes of dye to figure out what manufactured shade her natural hair color was, and it’s not why she’s suddenly had to get colored contacts.

 

The image that stares back at her in the mirror is eerie, and not quite right.

 

The hair’s a touch too dark. Her eyes aren’t pure hazel, but they’re supposed to be a mix of light and dark browns.

 

But it doesn’t matter, does it?

 

No one’s said a thing.

 

No one’s noticed, in the two weeks—a week  _ at least— _ that her eyes aren’t quite right, her hair isn’t the same, and her skin’s not her skin.

 

The face of a girl appears behind hers in the mirror.

 

“Oh why do you insist on covering it up?” she says.

 

She’s the only one that sees.

 

Molly’s imaginary friend. Except one she developed in university, not as a child. 

 

It’s a better alternative to admitting she’s gone crazy, though. 

 

Molly gives a nervous laugh in response.

 

“Better than letting them see what I’ve turned into, isn’t it?” she says, meeting her friend’s crystal blue eyes in the mirror. 

 

She’s seen them before, somewhere.

 

Somewhere real.

 

“But darling, you’re  _ glowing _ ,” she whispers, like it’s something wondrous and amazing. It’s not. It’s horrifying and Molly feels like she’s been hit with a wave of nausea.  _ Her  _ pale hair is luminous, and she wears the color naturally, unlike Molly. 

 

The girl gives her a wry smile, as if reading her thoughts.

 

“At least take off the makeup before you go to bed. Not good for your pores,” she tsks. 

 

Molly nods, and picks up a flannel and an oil cleanser. She bought packets of makeup wipes in bulk, at first, but quickly realized it was much too time consuming trying to remove the level of paste she’d covered herself with.

 

This is the worst part. 

 

She scrubs, and watches as her image fades, giving way to something that couldn’t possibly be human.

 

Her skin was no longer the right texture, too smooth, almost stone-like. Opalescent in the right light, under natural light. Far too fair.

 

Her hair too, seemed like it was leached of its color.

 

And her eyes—the brown is so light now it is barely there.

 

“I look like a ghost,” she whispers. She tries to hold back her tears. No sense in crying over it every night. It’s far from the first time she’s done this. 

 

“You’re  _ glowing _ ,” the girl repeats. 

 

She beams at Molly like this is a good thing and Molly tries to smile back, by reflex, even though she doesn't want to smile at all.

 

The girl comes up beside her and takes the flanel from her hand. Molly gives it over, and she starts rubbing at a spot near Molly’s ear that was missed.

 

It's surreal, because it breaks the illusion that the girl is a figment of her imagination and Molly wonders just how crazy she really is.

 

“Thanks,” is all she manages to get out, and in a broken voice, at that.

 

Then she unbuttons the first button of Molly’s collar. 

 

Molly flinches.

 

“No?” she asks.

 

Molly hesitates, then nods. She undoes another button.

 

The smooth, opalescent skin continues down her neck, her collarbone, her chest. But further down, there are patches across her stomach and hip that remind Molly of those androids on dreamy sci-fi television series. 

 

There are patches of her “real skin” meshed between spans of the stone-like surface. But day by day, it ceases to feel like real skin as it chips away like paint.

 

The girl reaches out, then stops and looks into Molly’s face, a “may I?” expression on her own. Molly nods.

 

With the most delicate of touches, she nudges at the edge of one patch with a finger. It looks like skin but falls away like plastic. Like dried fish scales.

 

Molly thinks of mermaids and exposed wiring and a part of her brain puts the two together and she thinks of what a bad idea it is and it startles a laugh out of her despite the surreality of her situation.

 

The girl looks back up at her with a bemused smile, like she’s upset she’s not in on the joke.

 

“What’s so funny?”

 

Then Molly notices that her bathroom has gotten more blue-green, more than the bluish light should make, and magic shimmers like waves atop the cheap tile. 

 

Molly thinks she’s losing it.

 

“Mermaids in the sea, getting electrocuted by exposed wiring,” she says. 

 

The girl with the moonlight hair cracks a real smile this time.

 

“They probably  _ deserve  _ it,” she says. 

 

Molly can’t stop giggling now.

 

“No  _ really _ ,” the girl continues. “I’ve met them and they really are awful creatures, so rude.”

 

Then Molly laughs and laughs and laughs until she realizes she’s crying.

 

She reaches up to touch her tears and just doesn’t know what to do—crumples up into a ball. Her friend reaches out for her and holds her on her way down, so that she’s not curled up on the bathroom floor like that one time in college when she got too drunk, or that time she broke up with a boyfriend she thought she was going to marry.

 

Oh, this. This outranks them all.

 

She’s leaning into her friend’s embrace instead, wondering just how far she’s gone, how she got like this.

 

The magic terrorist scare one week ago, that had been reported to be a hoax, and the danger was over.

 

But what if it wasn’t?

 

What if, for some reason, she’d been...hit, with the solution anyway?

 

The world sharpens back into focus as the thought occurs to Molly.

 

She sniffs, and wipes away the tears with the back of her hand.

 

Yes, she needs to think about this rationally.

 

Molly is a scientist and, if nothing else, she can rely on this.

 

She needs blood tests, she needs to compare every variable from right now to what she has on file, she needs concrete data.  

 

“I have to go back to the lab,” she tells her friend, wobbling a bit as she stands back up. She offers her hand to help the girl up too.

 

“I’ll come with you,” the girl replies.

 

Molly opens her mouth but before she can think of how to respond she catches her reflection in the mirror.

 

Her roots shimmer just the slightest bit, her foundation’s already all wiped away clean, her eyes really do nearly glow, and to put all that back on—

 

To go through the process of covering herself up all over again—

 

Even just the thought of it is a bit defeating.

 

_ No _ , Molly thinks. She has to do this.

 

Molly sighs and reaches for the bottle of makeup.

 

“I guess you can start by helping me with this,” she says, uncapping it and reaching for a makeup brush.

 

The moonlit girl laughs, and Molly stops short; she wasn’t expecting that response. She stares.

 

“What?” she asks. This time there’s a joke  _ she’s _ not getting, Molly supposes.

 

“Oh, Molly, dear, it'll be so much faster if I show you,” she says, and she shoves Molly into the shower. “Wash the rest of that horrendous paint, that primitive skin, off of you, and I'll show you what you can do.”

 

Molly gapes as the water turns on, drenching her with her trousers and underwear still on.

 

“Hey!”

 

“My way is much faster,” the girl responds, cutting off Molly’s protests. “Trust me.”

 

Molly hesitates, then takes the shampoo bottle that's handed to her. Pours some out. Lathers it into her hair. She can't imagine what this “easier way” might be, but after 12 hours on her feet covered in five layers of, well, paint, the water felt  _ so good. _

 

_ Red. _

 

Molly started, blinking water out of her eyes.

 

Was she…? No. She slowly pulled her hands out of her hair and down in front of her, out of the path of the water’s spray.

 

The permanent dye was washing off.

 

“Keep going,” the girl’s voice comes from behind her, like this was a good thing, like having to redo her dye job is the desired outcome. “You're almost done.”

 

_ What was in her water? _

 

Molly silently rinses the bubbles out, then twice again for good measure. Before long, the water starts running clear.

 

Molly knows it shouldn’t take so little time for a whole two boxes of dye to wash out. Not coloring so dark, meant to be permanent and soaked into her hair. 

 

She rubs her fingers together, because really, she can’t believe it, even if she’s seeing it. Then she lathers up with soap. Might as well finish showering.

 

But when she rinses off completely, the last vestiges of skin go down the drain along with the bubbles. 

 

Molly wears a haunted expression as she takes the towel the girl holds out for her, then steels herself again. She is going to find a cure, no matter what.

 

The girl hurries her out and Molly steps out of the shower, but slowly. 

 

“Good, good,” the girl says, and then encircles her hand around Molly’s wrist.

 

“Now think: Bloom,” she instructs. “Close your eyes and picture in your mind a gardenia in the moonlight, unfurling in an instant.”

 

“You’re that flower, Molly. Let the magic encompass you, flow through you, and create anew your visage,” the girl says, a rhythmic song in her ear and Molly closes her eyes and  _ imagines _ .

 

“Cover your stone-white skin, if you wish. Picture sunkissed honey, and soft, sand-whittled pebbles. A perfect, peachy stone. Thread the magic through your hair and soak it blood-red once again, wrought with fire-red strands.”

 

It’s an enchanting image, and Molly briefly pauses to think, she doesn’t look like that at all.

 

But she pictures it anyway.

 

Pictures her little crooked smile, her chapped pink lips. Her neutral complexion on the better days. The barely-there freckles. Her hair like autumn leaves on the ground stained with rain puddles and rubber boot prints— 

 

And she feels the magic wrapping around her like stitches weaving together a tapestry—

 

And she opens her eyes.

 

There, standing in the mirror before her, is the Molly she knows.

 

_ How? _ she tries to ask, but it comes out as a gasp instead. 

 

She turns to her friend in surprise and tries to ask again but all that comes out is a laugh—it bubbles out of her and she can’t stop.

 

“This can’t be real,” she says, still laughing. But the girl just grins a mischievous smile.

 

“More or less,” she replies. Then reaches out to touch Molly’s cheek.

 

In the mirror, her reflection ripples, and Molly can see that the place the girl’s finger prods recedes back to the stone-like white, then knits itself up again as she pulls her finger away.

 

“A glamour,” the girl whispers.

 

Molly is entranced by the image.

 

“No,” she whispers aloud. Molly shakes her head. The girl nods.

 

She takes Molly by the hand, sighs.

 

“You’d look best in white, in a gown woven together by threads of moonlight, but I suppose this will have to do,” she says. Molly looks down and sees she’s wearing her shirt and cardigan and boring trousers, ones just like ones in her own wardrobe. Her white lab coat over it all. 

 

“Now come with me,” she continues, and leads Molly by the hand—

 

—and straight through the wall.

 

Molly’s apartment opens out into a small patch of grass, a shared green space of sorts, but nothing like this. It never looks like this.

 

What Molly sees around her now is a deep, sea-green garden, lit by small fairy lights that arrive like falling stars. The grass, usually trimmed short, grows toward the sky, waving and wiggling their way up and up and up.

 

Under the moonlight, everything looks different than it does during the day. 

 

Molly hears the croak of a frog and turns around; but it’s not a frog, it’s this little toadstool-esque creature with the mouth of a frog. She’s too stunned to gasp, still trying to balance the beautiful and the grotesque of everything unveiled before her. 

 

“Isn’t it wonderful?” the girl says. 

 

Molly looks down again, and sees she’s not even touching the ground anymore. 

 

The girl raises Molly’s hand above her head, twirls her in a circle. Molly laughs.

 

The lab uniform gets swept away and swapped out for a white silk gown, with a sash that trails off in the back like wings. 

 

Then they spin and spin and spin, and she laughs—she can’t stop laughing in the face of the wonderful and horrible, and though she wonders what her life has come to, Molly has never felt so free.

 

-

 

Mycroft walks into work, and it is like setting foot in a lion’s den.

 

Thankfully, the entrances and exits are coded to a keycard that bears his magical signature, because otherwise he would not have even been able to come in at all.

 

He’s a 51% now, and though it’s quite impossible to write a law against it, it sure feels like his very existence is illegal.

 

If anyone suspects something, Mycroft knows he can always brush it off as a ridiculous mistake—at least for a while. Several people witnessed him being tested as a 49% when he first joined the “Agency.”

 

In the aftermath of the terrorist scare, most of the members will have been busy with monitoring, making sure life is operating as normal, without chaos. 

 

The majority of what the Agency does is monitoring—in order to predict dangerous events and stop them before they happen.

 

Jim Moriarty was a dangerous event, barely predicted in time. 

 

But today, Mycroft has a peculiar mission: to determine whether Moriarty’s name is in danger of being leaked, and to put measures in place to prevent that.

 

He walks into the main control room, and Keightley is there.

 

Keightley was one of four that knew Jim Moriarty’s name. One of the three heads present at the debriefing.

 

The other three, besides Mycroft, were David Chalstrey, Elizabeth Smallwood, and her assistant Vivian Norbury. 

 

Afterward, Mycroft had taken the liberty of referring to Moriarty as “The Terrorist” in the written report, which was now sealed. Keightley, Smallwood, and her assistant mainly worked within the Agency walls, and were of low concern.

 

But Chalstrey largely functioned as a liaison between the Agency and the government proper, and Mycroft needed to know what the man might say, and who he might say it to.

 

He doesn’t get a chance to make up a reason for a visit, because his direct superior Keightley spots him almost immediately and crosses the room toward him.

 

“ _ There _ you are,” he says, as if Mycroft isn’t at work two hours before work officially starts. “Holmes, with me.”

 

“Yes sir,” Mycroft responds, falling into step. “Is something the matter?”

 

“You need to see this,” Keightley says, grim. He swipes his own keycard and the two of them descend down an elevator and—Mycroft recognizes that they’re en route to Chalstrey’s own office.

 

It must be big then, to involve two heads of the Agency. Three perhaps, if Smallwood is already there.

 

Mycroft hasn’t had a chance yet to catch up, so he has no inkling as to what it might be.

 

They continue down the hall, but at the end of it instead of turning down the corridor where Chalstrey’s office sits, they turn the other way, and Keightley brings Holmes in through what looks like a utility closet door.

 

It’s not.

 

It leads to what looks like the viewing side of an interrogation room, and through the window is Chalstrey’s office. Mycroft holds his breath. It made sense nothing was private within these walls.

 

At first glance, it seems like Chalstrey is sitting at his desk. Immediately, it proves untrue.

 

His complexion is nearly blue, his eyes rolled up. 

 

Chalstrey is dead.

 

Mycroft turns to Keightley abruptly.

 

“We found him like this this morning,” Keightley says. “Door locked. Chalstrey dead inside. Drained of blood. Drained of magic.”

 

Mycroft’s heart hammers in his ears.

 

-

 

Jim breathes in the London air, and promptly grimaces. So much magic pollution in the cities, with the tech churning the stuff in and out. 

 

It’s overcast, but the UV still stings, so he puts on his sunglasses as he heads down the sidewalk.

 

It’s a strange place, London. All these people and so little imagination. When the Echidna rose up, fully formed, he had dearly wished for mass mayhem and a bit of chaos. Not bitter resignation and silent tears. Such was the city.

 

Jim hums as he strolls down the street, happy with the fact that Mycroft’s flat, secluded as its front door was, was just a turn away from the bustling city life.

 

All these faces, so easy to get lost in.

 

Not that Jim ever had any trouble blending, no matter the circumstances. He was an expert at getting around unseen. 

 

As a child, he hadn’t realized it was because he could practically will people to turn the other way. To encourage them to forget.

 

Across the street from a cafe, though, a pale hand catches his eye.

 

A wave.

 

Jim frowns, and backtracks a step. Another wave.

 

It’s a girl in a pretty dress, with bright red lipstick and dark, bohemian hair. 

 

It’s not anyone Jim knows.

 

But she waves, looking straight at him. 

 

He pushes his sunglasses down his nose and peers over at her, waves back.

 

She beckons him over, almost frantic in her hand gestures. 

 

Jim looks over his shoulder slowly, more for show than anything, and then turns back to her with a coy tilt to his neck. Who, me? She nods, beckons again.

 

Jim sighs, laborious, and strolls over. He sends out some feelers, magically, and comes up against a perfectly seamless wall. Hm.

 

The girl looks up at him with wide eyes once he stops before her single table. He raises an eyebrow, then gives her a slow, lazy and self-satisfied smile. 

 

“Hello,” he says. 

 

She doesn't get flustered, but rather urgently reaches out for his hand, which he casually draws back before shoving both hands in his pocket. Even the slight doesn't put her off kilter.

 

“Please, sit,” she says graciously, pushing out the chair opposite her with one high-heel sandaled foot.

 

Jim hesitates, but then figures he has nothing to lose. Yet, at least. He slumps into the chair with his hands still in his pockets. Studies her. She’s gorgeous in the sense that there’s a buzz of danger and mystery about her. There’s something not quite right with her, and it inevitably piques his curiosity. 

 

The girl sighs, happy, then reaches into her skirt pocket for a deck of Fortune cards.

 

“You just have such an  _ energy _ about you that I needed to do a reading,” she explains, spreading out the cards and shuffling them together.

 

“Sorry,” Jim drawls. “Not interested in having my fortune told.”

 

She hooks his ankle with her own before he can get up from the table and he frowns at the touch, bristling immediately.

 

“No, no, no, no charge,” she says, the words spilling out in a rush. “Mere curiosity. Your aura, it's, you're  _ brilliant, _ and I can't let this chance pass, I must insist,  _ please.” _

 

Jim looks at her for a moment, not so much weighing his odds as goading her into telling him more. It works. 

 

“I am a student of the goddess Fortuna,” she explains, and Jim eyes the cards she hasn't stopped shuffling this entire time, unamused at the level she's playing on, expression plainly stating  _ tell me something I don't know.  _

 

“I know, I  _ know  _ you've seen the frauds and charlatans in parks and fairs and you're thinking, what's so different from her? Well I'm,  _ I'm  _ not trying to turn a quick buck, no.” 

 

Her eyes then light up as if that's the right idea. She lets the cards fall into one hand, rummaging through her pocket with the other. 

 

“I'll even pay  _ you _ ! For your time!”

 

Jim scowls and whips off his sunglasses. 

 

“Look, lady,” he starts, but he doesn't get to finish. She grabs his hand with a vice-like grip so tight he drops his sunglasses, and he startles, having not realized she could get so close so fast.

 

“There’s danger in your future, young man, as your past is catching up with you. You'll be issued an invitation and should you accept it, you'll be wrenched away from your loved one,” she said, low and serious.

 

Jim glares. He's not scared so much as seething. This woman, this  _ no one,  _ knows  _ nothing _ about him. What did she think she knew? What was she making up?

 

He laughs a harsh, ugly laugh and then pries his hand out of hers.

 

“Fine, let's do a reading,” he says, his light, melodic tone at odds with the hardness of his eyes. If she minds, she doesn't show it. “And how did you pick up that little tidbit about me, hm?”

 

She smiles, easy, and gestures to the card deck she dropped. Two cards had spilled from the pile, showing the Wheel and the Lovers. 

 

“The cards showed me,” she says simply. 

 

Jim gives them a cursory glance then settles his eyes back on hers. She smiles and gives the cards another good shuffle before spreading them out in a fan.

 

“Pick three,” she instructs. 

 

He studies the cards, each covered in identical, decorative runes on the back. Then takes three cards, each next to the other, from the center. Slaps them face-up on the title.

 

“Ooh,” the girl coos. “The Princess.”

 

Jim is curious; it’s the middle of the three cards, and it’s not part of a normal deck. 

 

The girl taps her finger on the first card, the Tower, and then third, Death. 

 

“I see, I  _ see _ ,” she says, and there’s a hint of something like delight in her tone. “You’re the princess in the tower, and you’ve gotten so  _ good _ at pulling the strings and shaping the world to your will from afar that no one remembers you’re still there, trapped, alone and cut off from the world. And you’ve forgotten how to be a  _ part _ of the world.”

 

“Any knight who tries to venture into  _ your _ domain is asking for trouble,” she says, moving her hand from the middle card to brush the top of the Tower card. “Cataclysmically a bad idea. Unleashing you onto the world can only wreak havoc. And the world will push back. A terrible change will come, and then you will have to choose.”

 

“Which side will you pick, I wonder?” She considers the Death card now. “Very soon, you will have to decide what is most important to you, and leave the rest. The war is coming, little one, and you will have to choose a side.”

 

“Really? That’s the best you can do?” Jim sighs and moves to get up.  

 

“A five year old could make up that story from seeing the cards.  _ Boy, _ aren't I glad I didn't agree to pay for this.” 

 

Her laugh is like a twinkling bell, and then she says, “I can see why he’s so fond of you.”

 

But when he looks back up, she's gone. The only trace she was there is the crumpled paper napkin with her red lipstick prints.

 

He pockets it, and then continues on with his errand. 

 

-

 

Jim steps through the metal detector and holds his arms out for the routine sweep, before he goes up to the counter to buy a ticket at the art museum.

 

He’s got a meeting with a client, an heir looking to impress some less-than-savory “business partners” under his father’s nose.

 

Jim makes his way through the Greco-Roman periods and into the European Art wing. There is a sandy-haired man standing before a nice 19th century piece with an expression of deep longing. 

 

He has been here every day for the past two weeks.

 

The museum guards give him space; they know him. Sebastian Wilkes is the son of a very generous museum donor, and this painting is one of the first pieces the family gifted to the institution.

 

In three days, the painting will be auctioned off, and the proceed will go toward a very needed restoration project for the museum. Further in exchange, the family will be donating five additional pieces from the same artist to the museum for public display.

 

Wilkes has every right to want to see this painting one last time, to soak it up, before some private buyer sweeps it away to their second or third vacation home and it never sees the light of day again.

 

Except Wilkes knows exactly who is purchasing the art, and could care less whether he’ll ever see it again.

 

Jim sidles up beside the man and pops his gum.

 

“Sorry, do you have a tissue?” he asks, stretching the gum out with his tongue. “Lost its flavor, need to spit it out.”

 

Wilkes looks irritated, before recognizing who Jim is. Then he fumbles for a tissue.

 

“Nope, got one,” Jim says, unwrapping a little crumpled piece of paper and spitting out his gum in it. 

 

“Nice painting, eh?” he asks. 

 

“Hm? Oh. Oh, yes. One of my favorites,” Wilkes says. Jim rolls his eyes. This trust fund baby is  _ so _ out of his depth.

 

Jim holds out his hand to give something and Wilkes holds out his hand in confusion.

 

“Here, hold this for me, wouldya?” Jim says, dropping the wrapped gum ball in Wilkes’s outstretched palm, along with a second layer of paper containing what he needed. 

 

Jim’s forged a painting for him, and it’s done. Ready to be swapped out for the auction, as the real one goes off to some mob boss in exchange for a favor.

 

“Um,” Wilkes says, a bit grossed out.

 

Jim raises an eyebrow. Wilkes startles, and checks the trashball he’s holding again. Realizes there’s a second piece of paper, containing a coded time and location he needs.

 

“Oh!” he says, then catches himself, replying under his breath. “Thank you.”

 

Jim scowls. Gratitude is only an expectation of further favors, he thinks, and no one gets to expect any favors from him. He tells him as much, and this was nothing but an exchange of services. He checks the bank account for his fee, then stalks off. 

 

Three blocks away, Jim hears feet scampering after him. He slows, curious, and turns around.

 

There’s no one there.

 

Then he looks down, and sees an out of breath, lizard-y looking creature trailing by his feet.

 

“What?” Jim asks.

 

The creature holds up a big, green leaf. Jim hesitates, then takes it from its little claw.

 

Letters have been burned into the leaf, like an engraved invitation.

 

_ We’ll dance at midnight. Save one for me?  _

_ Come to the entrance under the hill. _

_ I’ll wait for you.  _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven’t forgotten about this story!! I just got unsatisfied with the outline I wrote up and am tweaking the plot here and there and getting *so* distracted omg


End file.
